The Devil Delivered and Other Tales Read online

  JOHN JOHN: The soul of William Potts.

  CORBIE TWA: Yeah right. And what about all those other peaks? In case you hadn’t noticed, apart from a drone he was all alone out there.

  PACEMAKER: Well, I admit I can’t explain it. There’s enough raw data to keep us all busy for years.

  BOGQUEEN: Assuming we live that long.

  CORBIE TWA: So now what?

  JOHN JOHN: Now we go out, each of us, and define our own riffs. Our own takes on what’s going on.

  BOGQUEEN: This is all a little scary. Some of those riffs lead to spontaneous combustion—

  PACEMAKER: Only if you’re standing in full sunlight. I don’t think it’s the riffs themselves. It’s due to the sudden spike in world temps.

  CORBIE TWA: For which the gov’ts are blaming Ladon’s skyhook.

  PACEMAKER: Rubbish. It’s a global development. Nobody’s buying it.

  JOHN JOHN: Nobody’s buying much of anything these days. Time’s come for some new riffs.

  BOGQUEEN: To what end, John John?

  JOHN JOHN: I don’t know. Let’s find out.

  Old Jim climbed out of the buggy and stood beside it, watching as Jack Tree walked toward him. On all sides, hilltops exhibited scorching from lightning strikes, and swaths of burnt ground trailed down the slopes. It was a wonder the whole prairie hadn’t gone up in smoke, but it seemed some of the new grasses defied the flames.

  Jack Tree’s sunglasses reflected twin fish-eye scenes of Old Jim and his crawler and the strange milky white sky behind him.

  “I expect,” Jim said, “you called to make arrangements.”

  Jack Tree cocked his head, then grinned. “Your artifacts?”

  “What else?”

  “Why did you do it? Why did you let him go back out? Without so much as a fucking goddamned bootsuit.”

  Jim looked away. “It’s what he wanted.”

  “So what?”

  “I thought you didn’t even like him.”

  “It was what he said that I didn’t like. Because he was right. He is right. We’re no different. If we’d been the ones with the technological advantage, and if we’d been the ones landing on European shores, we’d have been just as brutal. Look among the tribes on this continent and south of here. You’ll find slavery, genocide, endemic warfare, and cruelty. The past was full of ghosts, Jim. But, there are ghosts, and then there are ghosts.”

  “How goes the deal with Ladon?”

  “Well enough. It’s Daniel’s business, anyway.”

  They were silent for a long moment then.

  Finally, Jack Tree turned away. “You can keep the artifacts, Jim. My own people originated around Lake Superior, in any case. What would I do with a bunch of Cree stuff, anyway?”

  Sudden motion along the north ridge caught both their attentions. Silent, they watched a coyote trot along the crest. Then it halted and turned to regard them. As soon as it did so, the coyote vanished.

  Jack Tree grunted. “Bastards make me nervous when they do that. See you around, Jim.”

  Net Happynews

  A 22-million-ton organism in the South Atlantic Ocean is being tracked by science vessels. This is the twelfth such organism located in the past two years. No one knows what the hell it is or where it came from, although a recent report notes its chemical composition is virtually identical to the sub-ice ooze of Titan. DNA analysis had yielded a whole host of heretofore unseen chromosome sequences.

  In any case, one detail has been confirmed. The thing’s edible!

  Negotiations are concluded to the satisfaction of both representatives regarding the donation of stem cells from peripheral populations to shielded populations, leading the way to the development of the so-called hardened offspring capable of surviving in this fucked-up mess we call Earth. In related news, the Ladon Colony Project launch schedule has been set for Easter Sunday, A.C. 16. While the field generator installations are already en route to Mars. Orbiting the poles, these generators are intended to unify the planet’s magnetic field with the aim of adjusting global weather systems. Atmosphere plants will arrive in sets of fifty at monthly intervals once the installations are in place, in addition to whopping big polar-orbiting mirrors and a whole bunch of other stuff doing who knows what.

  Anyway, the first thing the colonizers will do when they get there is start work on Medicine Wheel Two.

  One last note. If you plan on joining the pilgrimage to the Drone, take food, camping gear, and lots of medication with you, ’cause the line’s gotten stupid long.

  Net

  Welcome one and all. This is the server node of the Twelve Official Riffs. To run them you need full implant trip-thought hardware. There is no charge to run these riffs, but if you try and tag a pop-up on any of them I will personally tear your head off and I kid you not.

  WARNING: Do not proceed if you are not being monitored by a family member or a friend. We take no responsibility if you starve to death, die of thirst, or self-combust. These riffs are long.

  Now, enjoy the ride. But be prepared to get your mind blown. And if you’re a tracker or Securicom streamer, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

  Would you leave this place then,

  where bread is darkness,

  wheat ill-chance,

  and yearn for wickedness

  to justify the sternly

  punished;

  would you hold the driven knife

  of a tribe’s political

  blood, this thrust of compromise,

  and a shaman’s squalid hut

  the heart of human

  purpose;

  would you see in stone the giants

  walking the earth,

  besetting the beasts

  in dysfunctional

  servitude, skulls bred flat to set

  the spike—

  would you flail the faded skin

  from a stranger’s flesh,

  excoriate kinship

  like a twisted flag from bones,

  scatter him homeless in a field

  of stone;

  where tearing letters from each word

  stutters the eye,

  disarticulating skeletal maps

  to uplift ancestry into ageless

  lives, progeny schemes are adroitly

  revised.

  Bread is darkness,

  wheat ill-chance,

  and all around us

  wickedness waits.

  vii) tall boy

  REVOLVO

  A cautionary tale

  set in a city in the center of a continent.

  What follows is possibly true,

  told to me—off the record—over three days

  and three nights, by a cephalopod.

  Never trust a writer.

  ONE

  Culture Quo

  1.

  in which a man seeks diagnosis

  Arthur Revell was fumbling with the ties of his paper shirt when the nurse stepped in.

  “Have you safely stored your belongings, Mr. Revell?”

  Arthur squinted down at her. She was wide, full breasted, and impossibly cheerful. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Tell me, is your wonderful smile a job requirement, or are you truly happy with my impending predicament?”

  The nurse closed Arthur’s locker, removed the key, and handed it to him. “It comes with the job, Mr. Revell,” she said, still beaming up at him. “Not to put you at ease, I’m afraid, but to keep my sanity. If you’ll wait here but another moment, Dr. Payne will be by shortly.” She checked her pocket for her cigarettes, then left.

  Arthur was alone again. He walked over to the window and looked down at the parking lot. The vehicles had backed up, filling the lanes between the rows of parked cars. Some people who had successfully parked and now wanted to drive away couldn’t, while everyone else waited for spaces that didn’t appear. Horns honked; two men had exited their cars and now argued, their red faces mere inches apart. Clearly, neither was a cardiac patient, since the
y’d been screaming at each other for some time—since Arthur had first been led into this cramped change room by the cheery nurse.

  His focus shifted as he detected something crawling on the window glass. A ladybug. Arthur was delighted. Outside, snowflakes swirled in the air, carried along by a brisk north wind that seemed to laugh at the prospects of an early spring. And here, on the seventh floor of the hospital, a ladybug meandered its way across the glass.

  The curtain filling the doorway to Arthur’s right was swept back and Dr. Payne entered.

  “Are we ready, Mr. Revell?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Come this way, then.” The doctor led him out into the hallway, speaking as he took his strange tiny steps with his strange, tiny feet. “Some patients prefer a shot of Valium prior to the examination. Of course, you haven’t anyone with you, so I assume you’ve declined the option when the nurse advised you last week—”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Excellent. The discomfort quickly passes, and the examination will last less than twenty minutes, provided—” The doctor turned at a doorway and looked up at Arthur over his glasses. “—you relax, Mr. Revell.” He gestured for Arthur to enter the room. A moment later a nurse followed them inside. This one was older, her face pinched and her eyes pink with fatigue.

  Dr. Payne found a pair of latex gloves and put them on. He then began fidgeting over the equipment. “Enjoy your smoke, Margaret?”

  The nurse placed her hands on Arthur’s shoulders and guided him toward the paper-covered bench. “Each one more than the last,” she answered. “Now, Mr. Revell, lie down here—on your left side, please, legs tucked up, that’s it, thank you. Rest your head on that towel. Excellent.”

  Dr. Payne turned on a video monitor. “Has he been sprayed, Margaret?”

  “Coming up, Doctor.” The nurse leaned over Arthur. “Open your mouth, please. I’m going to spray the back of your throat with a local anesthetic. Here we go.”

  The spray tasted bitter, spreading numbness around his throat. At that moment, Dr. Payne turned to face Arthur, in his hands a long flexible black tube as thick as a hot dog. “In this tube, Mr. Revell, is a camera, a separate biopsy tube, and a suction hose.”

  Arthur felt drool trickle down the side of his mouth into the towel. “It’s a lot bigger than the one I saw on The Nature of Things.”

  “Indeed, well, perhaps the show originated from England. They enter through the nose there, making the process quite different, sort of like right-handed driving. Of course”—the doctor smiled—“we’re not in England.”

  “That’s going down my throat?”

  “Coming right up. Now, relax, Mr. Revell. The discomfort is only momentary.” The doctor inserted the tube into Arthur’s mouth, reached in with his other hand, and guided the blunt optic-suction-biopsy end to the back of Arthur’s throat. “I am inserting now, Mr. Revell. Take deep breaths and relax.”

  If Arthur could have spoken, he would have explained that retching spasmodically wasn’t part of a devious plan to prolong the examination. As much as the doctor and the nurse cajoled him into thinking that he, Arthur Revell, was personally responsible for filling up the jar under the video monitor with his stomach fluids; that he, Arthur Revell, was contracting his stomach and duodenum to deliberately confound the camera; as much as he was made to feel guilty for not being a cadaver, there in truth was nothing he could do about his body’s violent reaction to invasive examination.

  He tried swallowing around the thick, hard tube, which proved his first foolish error, since the result was a succession of convulsive heaves that set the suction tube to frantic work. And once begun, there was no stopping the waves that followed.

  “So far, Mr. Revell,” Dr. Payne said ten minutes later, “I have not seen any sign of an ulcer, peptic or duodenal. As for a bacterial infection, we will of course require biopsies, which is what I will be doing now. I assure you, you won’t feel a thing.”

  Arthur then came to the realization that Dr. Payne had never had this procedure done on himself at any point in his training. The biopsies—small chunks of his stomach and middle intestine—were extracted by a metal cable with three savage teeth on its end that closed when the doctor twisted the other end. Had he been able, Arthur would have pointed out that even if he didn’t have ulcers before, he did now. Each pull was a tug, a deeply felt nip, first at the farthest reach the tube could manage—far down his duodenum—somewhere under his belly button. The last biopsy was a pair of nasty nips in his esophagus. In between, the doctor removed seven more.

  “Things have improved dramatically,” Dr. Payne assured Arthur, “now that your stomach is entirely empty. You will find yourself belching for a while, Mr. Revell, since I have filled your stomach with air. I see some inflammation of the esophagus, caused by gastrointestinal fluids, but thus far it is the only indication of distress. Now, we’re on our way out, Mr. Revell, and it only took us, what—how long, Margaret?”

  “Twenty-two minutes, Doctor.”

  “Very good. Very fine. Now, be certain to avoid eating or drinking for the next hour, Mr. Revell. And be careful with hot fluids for an hour after that, since your throat won’t be able to tell you what’s too hot. Very good, Mr. Revell, you did just fine.”

  “Use the towel to clean yourself off, Mr. Revell,” the nurse said. “Did you say something, Mr. Revell?”

  Arthur slowly sat up, wiping something that reminded him of ectoplasm from his chin. “Valium,” he said. “I want Valium now.”

  The nurse scowled up at him. “Well, it’s too late now, Mr. Revell.”

  “I know,” he said.

  2.

  in which conspirators conspire

  On his hands and knees, Andy “Kit” Breech followed the slime trail as it led behind the Italian leather sofa, cutting across one corner of the Kazakhstani rug, stopping at last in a circular, congealing pool in front of the balcony’s sliding glass door.

  “We’re always squeaky clean,” Annie said from the kitchen. “Always. I make sure, every time. You know me, Andy love. I make the calls. I wrap things up, right?”

  Frowning, he knelt beside the gooey pool. He checked the latch and the lock. No slime there. So, he came here to the window. But he didn’t go out. He just … sat here. Doing what? Andy’s frown deepened, marring his usual placid, smooth expression. He studied his face reflected in the glass door. Not good. A direct threat in the physical sense. Signs of chronic worry, fretting, uncertainty. Age I must, but those wrinkles—when they come at last—should map a lifetime of confidence, capability, efficacy. Not … this.

  “I mean,” Annie continued, “we cleaned things up last time, didn’t we? The bastard still hasn’t come up for air, right? Not a ripple, not one. You know me, Andy love. Uh, this is real bacon, Andy. Where’s the soy bacon? I left it here last time.”

  “It sprouted or something,” Andy muttered. He examined his reflection for a moment longer, profoundly appalled at the sheer unease he saw there; then his focus shifted to the balcony in the apartment block across the way. Twenty-five, maybe thirty meters distant. What’s the point of living in the penthouse when they build something even taller and stick it in your face like this? I should never have bought outright. We were culturally glutted. It was the ’80s. I was young. Should’ve leased. I’d be in there now, right up top, my view of my city unobstructed. Instead, I’m staring at a midlevel balcony and the woman who lives in that apartment is old, age being decidedly unattractive and aesthetically disturbing. She hardly ever comes out, though, and that’s good. Just her dog. It’s always out. Out there right now. Hardly moving. Just sitting there staring at me. Ugly dog, too. Some kind of short-haired subcompact model. Out there day and night. Watching me. Not me, personally, of course. That would be … paranoid. It just looks like he’s watching me. An illusion. There’s no reason for him to—I never wave.

  “It’s just colored paste,” Annie said. “It can’t sprout.”

  Andy got down on his hands
and knees again and began backtracking along the slime trail. “You mean it’s dead, lovemuffin? As in deceased. Expurgated. Obliterated from the realm of the living?” He heard her coming from the kitchen, sensed her pausing, scanning the sunken living room, finding him nowhere.

  “Where are you?” she asked, a little edgily.

  “Disembodied,” he said from behind the sofa. He’d stopped here, briefly. There’s tiny scratches on the floor. Evenly spaced. Make note of that.

  “Plants are lower orders of life,” Annie said wearily, unable to resist the bait and knowing it. “We have to eat to survive. I refuse to see an animal killed for my sustenance. Plain and simple, Andy love, that’s me. Where are you, anyway?”

  He crawled out from behind the sofa, carefully tracking the slime. There seemed to be another pause, just outside the closet, but he continued onward as it zigzagged from one hiding place to the next.

  Annie had seen him. “Oh, God, Andy. You’re getting … obsessed. It’s kinda scary.”

  He scowled. You don’t know the half of it. “You don’t know him like I do,” he said. “He’s up to something. I can feel it.”

  “For godsakes get up. I’ve finished the salad, and the soy scramblies are done. Besides, I’ve got to get to the office. I called a meeting. With Lucy, and Don, and—”

  “No more names,” Andy said. “The less I know, the better.”

  “What do you mean? You know everything.”

  “While conveying the appearance of affable, objective innocence.”

  “But I want to keep you informed,” Annie said.

  He heard the tremor in her tone. Tiny early-warning alarms chimed in his head. Her web’s trembling. Frozen in the center, she’s looking for a lifeline. Desperate is … unsexy. I have to think about this. Make a note. She knows I won’t go down. Thinks I’m a life preserver. Mistake. Major. I want to see contingency plans ASAP. “Relax,” he told her, “you think I can’t guess, with absolute accuracy, who’ll attend this meeting of yours? Beware conspiracies, lovetussle.”